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President Obama: Likable enough

President Barack Obama, a man known for his professorial aloofness and unwillingness to schmooze his enemies into submission, lamented — tongue-in-cheek — that Republicans are too worried about Fox News and the tea party to allow themselves to be swayed by his charming, fun-loving personality.

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Obama's "likable enough" moment with Hillary

Obama defends Cabinet diversity

Obama was in the midst of languidly reciting his debt ceiling talking points at a hastily called press conference in the East Room on Monday when a reporter asked about the lack of high-profile promotions of women in his Cabinet — and his reputation for not wanting to hang out socially with his political foes, or anybody outside his insular inner circle.

He answered the first part methodically, ticking off the names of high-profile women in his administration. But it was the “insular” question that awakened the sleepy chief executive as he arched an eyebrow, smiled and began talking about getting “kind of lonely” in the “big, old” White House. This was, technically, the final press conference of the president’s first term and he was feeling expansive.

“With respect to this truism about me not socializing enough, patting folks on the back and all that stuff, most people who know me know I’m a pretty friendly guy. And I like a good party,” he said when asked about how his lack of a personal connection to senior Republicans was souring the tenor of debt ceiling and sequester talks.

Obama’s remarks echoed the most infamous diss of his political career, his early 2008 crack, “You’re likable enough, Hillary,” to a vanquished Democratic opponent soon to become his treasured secretary of state.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) played golf with Obama once, and they nearly struck a grand bargain on taxes and spending over drinks afterward. Obama professed to have a blast, but now Boehner has vowed not to negotiate with the president one-on-one after a series of less productive encounters — highlighted, Republicans say, by lengthy Obama lectures and much eye-rolling.

Obama has never played golf with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who once said his top goal was to make Obama a one-term president. In fact, Obama hardly ever talks with the cagey Kentucky Republican, outsourcing that relationship to Vice President Joe Biden, who is nearly universally regarded as a “friendly” guy.

The issue of temperament isn’t a trivial one, not with national default and trillions in looming cuts being seriously considered — and the White House claiming it will refuse to negotiate on the debt ceiling. On Monday, Obama used no fewer than four different metaphors to deride the GOP for linking deficit reduction to the debt cap, likening the strategy to hostage-taking, pointing a gun at the head of the American taxpayer, being a “deadbeat” and walking out on the check after consuming a sumptuous meal at a restaurant.

Obama recently claimed that his Republican adversaries found it hard to say “yes” to him — and on Monday, he underscored that by saying merely negotiating with him was seen by many in the GOP as an unpardonable sin destined to be paid for on Fox.

“You know, the truth is that you know when I was in the Senate, I had great relationships over there, and up until the point that I became president, this was not an accusation that you heard very frequently,” Obama said.